@justfortytwo/persona

The templated identity and runtime context for a fortytwo personal assistant. Ships the scaffolding the installer renders into a user's project so the assistant has a name, a voice, owner facts, house rules, and a recallable memory corpus — plus the internal Oneiros consolidation library and prompt. It never ships an owner's real data.

  • Version: 1.0.0-2 · Runtime: static templates + manifest + compiled Oneiros library (entry dist/oneiros.js)

What's in here

templates/
  CLAUDE.md.tmpl                       # root boot pointer
  context/
    INDEX.md.tmpl                      # wake routine + boundaries + policy
    OWNER.md.tmpl                      # owner facts (name, languages, timezone, locale)
    PROFILE.md.tmpl                    # concise, always-loaded owner profile
    SOUL.md.tmpl                       # assistant character and voice
    rules/
      APPROVED.md.tmpl                 # binding house rules
      PROPOSED.md.tmpl                 # pending rule ideas (not binding)
    memory/
      INDEX.md.tmpl                    # memory corpus index
      owner-profile.md.tmpl            # stable identity, bio anchors, positioning
      owner-beliefs.md.tmpl            # core beliefs / operating principles
      owner-voice-and-writing.md.tmpl  # tone, vocabulary, channel rules, quality test
      domain-positioning.md.tmpl       # primary venture / domain narrative
manifest.json                          # field manifest (drives `fortytwo init`)
fortytwo.compat.json                   # contract majors this persona relies on
oneiros/prompt.md                      # private Oneiros worker prompt

How it works

Templates use {{placeholder}} tokens. The installer CLI drives the flow:

  1. fortytwo init prompts for each field in manifest.json (or accepts flags/env for non-interactive installs) and writes the answers to a gitignored .fortytwo/identity.json — the single source of truth.
  2. The CLI renders every templates/**/*.tmpl against identity.json and writes the result into the gitignored context/ (and CLAUDE.md at the project root).
  3. Re-running init re-renders managed templates and preserves captured files; update reconciles machine-owned runtime assets only — it never re-renders context.

The concise, always-loaded summary lives in OWNER.md / PROFILE.md; the deep, atomized owner profile lives in the memory MCP (retrieved on demand).

What ships — and what never does

The rendered output (context/*, CLAUDE.md), .fortytwo/identity.json, and any uploaded profile material are all gitignored in the user's project and never enter this repo. Every owner-specific value is a {{placeholder}} resolved at install time on the user's machine. owner_email and owner_address are captured for the owner record but deliberately have no template token — they stay in the gitignored identity file.

Field manifest

manifest.json carries version, manifestVersion, description, plus:

  • files — template → output → render mode:
    • managed — re-rendered on every init (CLAUDE.md, the INDEX.md files); not meant for hand-editing.
    • captured — rendered once on first install, then owner-owned and never clobbered (OWNER.md, PROFILE.md, SOUL.md, rules/, the whole memory corpus).
  • fields — descriptors like:
{
  "key": "owner_name",
  "prompt": "Your full name (how the assistant refers to you)",
  "type": "string",
  "required": true,
  "default": null
}

type is string, text (multi-line), or list (entered one item at a time). Every {{placeholder}} has a matching entry.

Compatibility

fortytwo.compat.json declares the cross-component contract majors this persona targets; fortytwo doctor reads it and warns on mismatch:

{ "memoryToolContract": "^1", "policySchema": "^1" }

Oneiros

Internal background maintenance of the persona over the memory corpus:

  • Ownership: the scheduler owns the daily persona.oneiros job (17 3 * * * UTC); runner executes a separate tool-free session (--safe-mode, no tools/MCP/skills/session persistence); persona exports initialize(root, head), hasWork(root, memory) and refine(...).
  • Input: the worker receives a JSON baseline and a bounded memory delta; it returns { "additions": [] } or evidence-backed additions.
  • Mutation boundary (deterministic, enforced in code): only new plain-text bullets in existing PROFILE Voice, Interests and Expertise sections. All other files/sections are protected; existing bytes are preserved; evidence IDs are validated; inferred/imported/ superseded evidence is rejected. Eligible evidence is live and observed: "stated", with source: "owner" or Telegram inbound-message provenance; outbound assistant messages are excluded.
  • Semantic fit: Voice covers expression/tone, Interests topics, Expertise knowledge/depth. Observations without an allowed home stay in memory. Semantic classification is model policy; the deterministic validator enforces the narrow structural surface.
  • Cursor: { database, position } — persistent DB identity plus the AUTOINCREMENT high watermark (deleted IDs included). Memory supplies bounded ascending pages; the checkpoint records only the reviewed page. No-op reviews also advance; new memory arriving mid-run waits for a later run.
  • State: private under .fortytwo/oneiros/ — checkpoint.json, PID locks, and an interrupted-write pending.json. Writes use fsync + atomic rename. Recovery applies a validated receipt only if the context still matches its before/after hash; retries cannot double-apply. Oversized input (> 100 KB) fails closed without checkpointing.
  • Bootstrap: fresh init initializes at the current memory head (zero for an empty DB) and seeds one persistent job. Updating an older install does the same only when state is missing — no historical backfill, no context rendering during update.

Testing

npm test && npm run build

No live model call is required by the test suite.

Scope

In scope: templates, field manifest, render-mode policy, compatibility declaration, Oneiros consolidation library + worker prompt.

Out of scope: the rendering engine itself (installer), job scheduling (scheduler), the model session (runner), durable memory (memory).